Telephone Wires
by potsiesgirl
Summary: Joey has a new man in her life, Eddie Doling. He's fresh, different, and NOT from Capeside. Season Six Series, Story No. 6


Telephone wires stretch from pole to pole, straddling the road he drove, gliding towards destination nowhere. In a day and age brimming with cell phones and Blackberries and Internet cafes, overflowing information and conversation and chat at every turn, those stalwart timbered posts weather on, not yet obsolete. Somewhere, a brethren of someones still use phones attached to lines, plugged into walls, stretched from wires between posts, hop-scotching connections amidst concrete buildings dotting across landscapes. They trace a zigzag trail from Where One Starts to Where One Ends Up -- a whole host of distances traversed in barely half a second.

Eddie Doling envisions voices traveling through wires, carrying story upon story, spinning endless into each other. Angry ones dumping love-terminations onto unsuspecting message machines. Sorrowed ones sniffling miss-yous across the miles. Happy ones planning reunion. Glad ones sending good wishes. Neutral ones transmitting information and news, devoid of mitigating influence. Child voices. Man voices. Girl voices. Old voices. Computer voices. Maybe even the voices of dogs or kittens or iguanas or pet hamsters or parrots that caw, "Fuck you! Sqawk!"

So many voices and stories he could easily make up, whiling away the time from a beginning point to its certain end, yet Eddie still could not fathom the depth and breadth and wideness of Joey Potter's connection to a tiny place called Capeside. A place she wants to detest. A space she longs to discard. Still, she carries it deep in her heart. He holds Worcester in the marrow of his own bones, so understands she's still caught in the vise of her rearing, enshrouded by a gilded past. Eddie wonders if he will ever get her to let go.

Even now, at every roadside stop, the girl's ear melds perpetual to her cell phone, always in hand. He never knows who's on the other end. He does not _want_ to know.

xxxxx

"_So you're with Eddie?"_

"_He's driving us, yes. He was going out to California anyway, to L. A. He's interviewing for a writing program there."_

"_I'm glad you're not alone."_

"_Me too."_

"_You'll take care of yourself?"_

"_I will, Pace."_

xxxxx

In the car, she snuggles up to Eddie, leans warm and sometimes hot against his side, heavy on his arm as he drives. He knows it's safer if she's buckled in, but he likes her weight against him, likes serving as a pillow as she dozes, slumbers, sometimes slobbers, but always burrows, soft and sensual. He gets hard sometimes, when she shifts just-so, makes him want to veer to the side of the road and ravish her right there, in the front seat of this jeep, pull her shirt up to taste her delicious tits or yank her jeans off to feast on her down there. But it's a long drive and he's the designated wheel-man and he doesn't want to start something when its already finished. Or is it? Anyway, Audrey and Bob slumber in the back seat, tossing about, fitful.

When he absconded, left his apartment and Boston and her, abrupt, Joey tracked him down, following a careless clue written onto an abandoned manuscript – the phone number and address of his childhood home. Eddie likes to cut things off, clean, surgical, no festering, no infection. Slice things off in one fell swoop. But she dangled, like a hangnail. Stubborn. Painful. Harley Hetson, Joey's sometime teenage charge, found him in Worcester, at his father's house, dragged him back to accountability with a falsehood, a feigned pregnancy spun from the mind of a well-meaning youthful mind. Forced him face-to-face with a customary fear. _We have two different futures ahead of us. You deserve to be with the best guy in the room, not the one who picks up his trash or busses his table. You're gonna have whatever you want in this life, Joey._

But even after that, when he left yet again, Joey followed, showed up on his doorstep in Worcester, thrust his broken dream into his face. Those stories from which he also absconded, she gave to Professor Hetson, got him to recommend them – and him -- to the prestigious California Writers Workshop. That damned surgeon-hussy sewed him back onto his prior wishful visions, his yearnings to spin a dream fulfilled. _Look, a long time ago, you told me that you wanted to be one of those people that took chances, who really lived life. But I guess that was a line, huh? Because as far as I can see, you're just afraid of me, of yourself, of actually living your life._ Overcome, he kissed her. She shoved him away. He said he loved her. She said it was too late. But she said she loved him back. That was also painful. It made him happy. Happy hurts too.

xxxxx 

"_And you're okay?"_

"_I'm fine. We left kind of fast, but I thought it was important to bring Audrey as soon as possible. And I have to make sure she doesn't bail again."_

"_Will she be all right?"_

"_I hope so. I don't know. She has a guy with her. Bob."_

"_Bob?"_

"_He's…interesting."_

"_You don't have to spare my feelings, Jo. We're broken up."_

"_I don't want to talk about it."_

"_And with that statement, you've just let me know that sex was involved."_

xxxxx_  
_

When they found Audrey, they thought she was dead. She _looked _dead, splayed eyes-closed in that bathtub. They pushed past a dazed, confusing Bob and Eddie had just been snarking at Joey. Then that one instant of sarcastic banter changed fast into horror, mortification. Joey screamed. And Audrey screamed. And Joey screamed again, ushering in a volley of shrieks back and forth. Just like that, Death skittered away, hoodwinking. Audrey sat up and Joey clutched at her chest and Eddie felt the hard beat-beat of her heart hammering against him, pressed against her back. He clutched her forearms, holding her steady, feeling her waver.

So now, they're zooming down the highway with Audrey and her buddy Bob in tow, a so-called "fantastic lay", sprawled across the backseat and edgy. Eddie pictured himself as the mobile line between points, starting out in Boston, Massachusetts, then heading out to Santa Monica, California, dodging tiny towns and roadside diners and ramshackle gas stations as they wended their way across the U. S. of A. Eddie Doling -- the human rollerball on Triple A's invisible pinball map-machine. Jack Kerouac's fucking Road. Sleeping Bob farted and amidst complaints and protests, they rolled down windows to release the spew, bring fresh air in to dilute the sudden stench. Eddie imagined a trip more glamorous than this. Already, his vision was failing him.

xxxxx

"_You guys are driving Audrey all the way out to California?"_

"_It's the only way to make sure she goes to rehab. I have to see her land on the Left Coast with my own eyes."_

"_I guess she wouldn't want to talk to me, huh?"_

"_What do you think?"_

"_I'd hazard a guess at 'Negative'."_

"_You would be correct. It's gonna take some time, Pace."_

"_True enough."_

"_So what's new with you?"_

"_I kissed Emma."_

"_What?"_

"_It was stupid. I let my badder half talk her into going to an office party with me."_

"_The one you asked me to but I told you I couldn't go?"_

"_Well, yeah. But there's more. There was actually a contest amongst my colleagues to see who could bring the hottest date."_

"_You brought Emma as your intended **trophy**?"_

"_Yeah, it sounds as bad as you say it."_

"_Did she find out?"_

"_Yup. And boy, did she let me have it!"_

"_Serves you right! I can't believe you went along with that misogynistic bull-crap. But how the hell did you end up kissing her?"_

"_I apologized after and we were sitting on our couch, all made-up and fine with everything. Then we looked at each other and 'Boom!' It just happened."_

"_Just kissing?"_

"_Jack came home right then. He sat between us and we all watched TV the rest of the night. He still doesn't know what went down. I don't want him to."_

"_And that's it?"_

"_Yeah. We talked about it the next morning. It was a mistake, got caught up in the moment, just an impulse, yadda yadda yadda."_

"_An impulse, huh?"_

"_This was different. Didn't mean anything. We agreed to just let it go. No hard feelings. It's all back to normal."_

"_You know, I'm glad I said no…"_

"_But…"_

"_Hottest date, huh?"_

"_Don't flatter yourself **too** much, Potter."_

"_Think I could've won ya that prize, Pace?"_

"_If you took a shower and brushed your hair? Hands down. But that's a mighty big if."_

"_Bite me, Witter."_

"_With pleasure, Josephine."_

xxxxx

This Potter girl screwed him to within an inch of his life the night before in their dingy hotel room, sandwiched between Audrey's and that of her decidedly non-intimate male pal for this interim. He and she offered up an orchestra of loud grunts and enthusiastic squeals and "Oh yes!" to any with ears to hear it. The long stretches of bare road and mindful concentration getting from one point to another found release in that torrid tangling, diminishing tensions. Joey's not usually a loud one, but Eddie guesses some deep-seated resentment enables her to express herself fully, uncaring of aural audiences. At least uncaring of an _Audrey _audience. She dismisses Bob completely. He supposes the restlessness of the two back there has something to do with this event from last night. Or events, plural, as the case actually was. Once started, they did not stop at one. Audrey glowers.

At the next gas station, Eddie buys some snacks and a tray of thermal paper coffee cups full of hot liquid. He wants to provide a caffeinated jolt to the denizens of his jeep. He hates being the only one wide-awake while driving. Returning, he finds Audrey holding court, standing on its hood. In short order, she lashes out at him, stating her opinion that he can only aspire to pumping gas for a living, then insults his jeep as "a piece of crap," before tussling with Joey over her cell phone. It seems Joey has called Audrey's mother and the blonde is none-too-pleased. She takes her irritation out on him, on Joey, at all and sundry. Eddie doesn't have time for this shit, especially since he's doing _her_ a goddamned favor. Yet within moments, Audrey and Bob carjack the jeep and speed off, yanking away from the still gushing gas nozzle, leaving it – and he and Joey – behind, streaming useless.

xxxxx

"_We're sort of stranded right now."_

"_Stranded where?"_

"_If I knew that, we wouldn't be stranded, would we?"_

"_So what are you going to do?"_

"_Eddie and I are walking to the next stop-off point along the highway. The people at the gas station say there's a place we can rent a car near a karaoke bar just down the way."_

"_Why are you **walking**?"_

"_Eddie tried to hitchhike. Tried to get me to hitchhike as well. No luck."_

"_I vaguely recall that your skills at hitchhiking were mighty unimpressive."_

"_Oh, they were impressive. Just impressed upon the wrong party, that's all."_

"_Prinicipal Green was **not** amused."_

"_Nor were **you** particularly amusing."_

"_But I was charming."_

"_Churlish, more like."_

"_You loved me. Unceasingly."_

"_You bugged me. Increasingly."_

xxxxx

She's talking on her cell phone again, just a little ways down the road. Eddie hopes she's calling Triple A. But what could they do? He had no actual car to service at the moment. They could call the cops, put an APB out on his technically stolen car, but Joey won't have any of that. Audrey is in enough trouble. And Bob, for all they know, could be a wanted drug dealer, which would make them inadvertent accomplices. The last thing he needs is a few nights spent in some backwater jail cell, courtesy of this company he was keeping.

But Eddie does not mind this impromptu hike. He's pleased to be relieved of his driving duties, even if it means walking a whole mile or two to the next destination. Something tells him he'll get his car back eventually. Audrey is a pain in the ass, obnoxious as hell, but he detects she loves Joey fiercely beneath all the hate-on. So in the end, she'll return his jeep. Hopefully sooner rather than later. In the meantime, he and Joey walk together on the side of the road.

She's punchy, still riled about before, before they left Boston, even though they've had a plethora of after-incidents since, including some most intimate. She said Audrey accused her of going on this road trip for herself, because of him. That she had nothing to do with Joey's intentions. Joey's upset at the thought, but cops to something else: _I'm having trouble letting you go too_. So he told her, _This is probably gonna sound cheesy, but…I've never cared about anyone the way I care about you. It's too late. I screwed up. But the way I feel about you? I love you, Joey._ It's the most optimistic thing he's felt for a very long time, much less say out loud. But then she responded, bringing him back down to the cold, hard dirt of the earth below. _You're right. It did sound cheesy. Cause you know what, Eddie? I can't for the life of me figure out how loving somebody translates into leaving them behind_.

Anger lent heftiness to the flung out words, hiding underneath, a down-spiral of misery. Did _he _cause that, all by himself? He wants to ask her if that pain is his fault, his doing. Some part of him grows awed at the thought that in such a short time, he's had that deep an impact on her. Another part inches forward, cautious: she's loved before and you've met both of those Capeside boys. Nothing emerges in a vacuum, and in matters of the heart, hurt revisits according to theme, not persons. Was loving and being left Joey's own lovelorn theme? It certainly was his. Refugees they were, cast out to find fragile solace, walking wounded, limping along, resolute still, despite having been maimed.

Eddie looks up when he hears Joey laugh, her ear joined to a voice on the other end of that cell phone. A wireless link to a voice that brings genuine smiles. They light up her face and she's glowing.

xxxxx

"_And where is that Eddie guy now?"_

"_Down the road a bit. I wanted a little privacy to make this call."_

"_Does he know you're calling me?_

"_Does he need to?"_

"_Why **are **you calling me, Jo?"_

"_I don't know. I guess I just need to hear your voice. You help me remember that people come back. That they aren't gone forever when they leave."_

"_I could change my phone number."_

"_I'd still find you."_

"_Yes, you probably would. I could change **me**."_

"_Still…"_

"_I'll never be rid of you, huh?"_

"_Would you want to be?"_

"_No."_

"_Right back at ya."_

xxxxx

Just as the sun plopped down below the horizon, washing dark onto them all, Eddie and Joey found Audrey kicking the shit out of some boozer who tried to force his amorous attentions. Sobbing, upset, Audrey fell into Joey's arms, begging to be taken to rehab. Eddie found Bob, passed out drunk inside that seedy karaoke bar, flung over a table snoring. Piling back into the jeep, they deposited Bob slumbering and drooling in the front seat next to Eddie while Joey tended to sniffling Audrey, behind. Ah, the adventures of babysitting the rich and aimless, Eddie thought darkly.

At the end of the cross-country road, it was a balmy afternoon. They dropped Audrey off at the Liddell home and the two girls shared a poignant goodbye. Eddie did not think much of Audrey Liddell, but Joey cared for her deeply, and he cared deeply for Joey. Besides, he wished anyone well that was brave enough to face personal addiction. His own father did so, almost too late. So he was the last one to lay judgment at someone's feet. Even _this_ someone's well-manicured, expensively-shod, lazy-ass feet. Besides, she took Bob with her. That brought her up higher within his good graces.

And finally, he and Joey are alone.

xxxxx

"_You got Audrey home okay?"_

"_Safe and sound, with Bob thrown in as bonus."_

"_Emma's still mighty pissed at the way she blew that gig for the band. I think it was supposed to be their shot at going legit."_

"_I don't blame her. But hopefully, bygones when Audrey sobers up. She's really sorry about that, I think. She's sorry about a lot of things. I hope she gets better soon."_

"_So do I. Are **you **feeling better?"_

"_I think so. Eddie and I are driving over to the campus. He's gone to get a Coke at the 7-11 across the street."_

"_Just let things happen, Jo."_

"_What do you mean?"_

"_Don't be afraid to let go."_

xxxxx

Stringing alongside the asphalt path leading to that opposite coast, those telephone wires still stretched, the only constant thing in all the rushing by. Eddie grew to find comfort in them. They were, in fact, his touchstones, these lines crackling with humanity and happenings, ubiquitous. If the world ended now, all that would remain would be cockroaches and telephone wires, the sole remains of The World That Was, proving waste and communication in a long-lost era, both of these probably contributing to its downfall. Like those cockroaches crawling up his arm, the night he shivered in a Boston apartment he could no longer afford, no job, no cash, no heat, no light. Just hard shame and a plastic telephone.

Sordid thoughts sit easily on his brain. Perch there as if vagrants on a stoop, holding brown-bagged bottles of whiskey in hand, laughing too loud at all the passers-by. His mind's eye throws stones at the revelers that insist Things happen for a reason, that Life is basically kind, that Dreams do come true. Strolling next to a sunny California beach at the edge of campus, the girl holding his hand, squeezing his fingers, once said she did not believe in these things either, feigning cynicism to hide her more hopeful inclinations.

_You're gonna go down in the books as one of the great loves of Joey Potter's life_, Audrey told him in farewell, a comment that burrows into Eddie's being like a groundhog seeking hibernation, hording warmth for the winter. He sets out to collect more, to keep him sustained, to stay connected to her, to ensure that what they have is real. This cannot be goodbye, so they make whimsical plans to meet again, perhaps in one year, maybe even in Paris, a place Joey has always wished to be. _Paris shouldn't be something you could have done once upon a time,_ he tells her. She says, _You might be the sweetest, nicest surprise that's ever happened to me. I guess that's my way of saying …I love you too. If you don't mind, I'm gonna keep on loving you for as long as I can._

Then they were hugging hard and kissing harder and he picked her up, spinning her around. As the sun set, casting layered yellow-orange-red glows around them, the blue blue ocean undulated that feeling in rolling waves, outward into vastness.

"_Sometimes I'm scared."_

"_Of what?"_

"_Of what I might find in my freefall. Or of what I could lose. What if the ending isn't happy?"_

"_I'm scared too. But this is what it is."_

"_Will you be there when I get back?"_

"_I'm always here, Jo. You know that."_

"_I know, Pacey."_

**THE END**


End file.
